1 . Heads or Tails?

Careful: It’s not 50-50

The phrase “coin toss” is a classic synonym for randomness. But since the 18th century, mathematicians have _________ that even fair coins tend to land on one side slightly more often than the other. Proving this tiny bias, _________, would require hundreds of thousands of carefully recorded coin flips, making laboratory tests a logistical (后勤的，组织协调的) _________.

František Bartoš, currently a Ph.D. candidate studying the research methods of psychology at the University of Amsterdam, became interested in this _________ four years ago. He couldn’t _________ enough volunteers to investigate it at first. But after he began his Ph.D. studies, he tried again, recruiting 47 volunteers from six countries. Multiple weekends of coin flipping later, including one 12-hour marathon _________, the team performed 350,757 tosses, breaking the previous record of 40,000.

With one side initially upward, the flipped coin landed with the same side facing _________ as before the toss 50.8 percent of the time. The large number of throws allows _________ to conclude that the nearly 1 percent bias isn’t a fluke (侥幸). “We can be quite sure there is a bias in coin flips after this data set,” Bartoš says.

The leading theory explaining the _________ advantage comes from a 2007 physics study by Stanford University statisticians, whose calculations predicted a same-side bias of 51 percent. From the moment a coin is launched into the air, its entire track — including whether it lands on heads or tails — can be calculated by the laws of __________. The researchers determined that airborne coins don’t turn around their symmetrical axis (对称轴); __________, they tend to move off-center, which causes them to spend a little more time high in the air with their initial “up” side on top.

For day-to-day decisions, coin tosses are as good as random because a 1 percent bias isn’t __________ with just a few coin flips, says statistician Ameli, who wasn’t involved in the new research. Still, the study’s conclusions should eliminate any lasting doubt regarding the coin flip’s slight bias. “This is great experiment-based evidence __________ the bias,” she says.

It isn’t difficult to prevent this bias from influencing your coin-toss matches; simply __________ the coin’s starting position before flipping it should do the trick. But if your friends are __________ the tiny bias, you may as well benefit from your slight advantage. After all, 51 percent odds beat a casino’s house advantage. “If you asked me to bet on a coin,” Bartoš says, “why wouldn’t I give myself a 1 percent bias?”

1.

A．confirmed

B．denied

C．recorded

D．suspected

2.

A．therefore

B．however

C．for example

D．vice versa

3.

A．nightmare

B．context

C．intervention

D．delay

4.

A．coinage

B．discipline

C．challenge

D．phrase

5.

A．cooperate with

B．round up

C．shrug aside

D．count on

6.

A．analysis

B．race

C．interview

D．session

7.

A．upward

B．evenly

C．downward

D．uniformly

8.

A．volunteers

B．gamblers

C．psychologists

D．statisticians

9.

A．accidental

B．dominant

C．subtle

D．prejudiced

10.

A．mechanics

B．relativity

C．geometry

D．chemistry

11.

A．moreover

B．instead

C．likewise

D．initially

12.

A．insignificant

B．accessible

C．inclusive

D．perceptible

13.

A．reversing

B．integrating with

C．backing up

D．rejecting

14.

A．concealing

B．shifting

C．perceiving

D．anchoring

15.

A．favourable to

B．opposed to

C．unaware of

D．suspicious of

2 . Facing AI extinction

In a recent White House press conference, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre couldn’t suppress her laughter at the question: Is it “crazy” to worry that “literally everyone on Earth will die” due to artificial intelligence? _________, the answer is no.

While AI pioneer such as Alan Turing cautioned that we should expect “machines to take control”, many contemporary researchers _________ this concern. In an area of unprecedented growth in AI abilities, why aren’t more expects weighing in?

Before the deep-learning revolution in 2012, I didn’t think human-level AI would emerge in my lifetime. I was familiar with arguments that AI systems would insatiably seek power and resist shutdown — and obvious _________ to humanity if it were to occur. But I also figured researchers must have good reasons not to be worried about human _________ risk (x-risk) from AI.

Yet after 10 years in the field, I believe the main reasons are actually cultural and historical. By 2012, after several hype cycles that didn’t pan out, most AI researchers had stopped asking ‘what if we succeed at replicating human intelligence’, _________ their ambitions to specific tasks like autonomous driving.

When concerns resurfaced outside their community, researchers were to quick to dismiss outsiders as _________ and their worries as science fiction. But in my experience, AI researchers are themselves often ignorant of arguments for AI x-risk.

One basic argument is by analogy: humans’ _________ abilities allowed us to out-compete other species for resources, leading to many extinctions. AI systems could likewise deprive us of the resources we need for our survival. Less _________, AI could displace humans economically and, through its powers of manipulation, politically.

But wouldn’t it be humans wielding AIs as tools who end up in control? Not necessarily. Many people might choose to deploy a system with a 99 per cent chance of making them phenomenally rich and powerful, even if it had a 1 per cent chance of _________ their control and killing everyone.

Because no safe experiment can definitively tell us whether an AI system will actually kill everyone, such concerns are often dismissed as unscientific. But this isn’t an excuse for ignoring the risk. It just means society needs to reason about it in the same way as other complex social issues. Researchers also emphasize the difficulty of predicting when AI might _________ human intelligence, but this is an argument for caution, not complacency.

Attitudes are changing, but not quickly enough. AI x-risk is admittedly more _________ than important social issues with present-day AI, like bias and misinformation, but the basic solution is the same: regulation. A robust public discussion is long overdue. By refusing to engage, some AI researchers are neglecting _________ responsibilities and betraying public trust.

Big tech sponsors AI ethics research when it doesn’t hurt the bottom line. But it is also lobbying to exclude general-purpose AI from E. U. regulation. Concerned researchers recently called for a(n) _________ in developing bigger AI models to allow society to catch up. Critics say this isn’t politically realistic, but problems like AI x-risk won’t _________ just because they are politically inconvenient.

This brings us to the ugliest reason researchers may dismiss AI x-risk: funding. Essentially every researcher (myself included) has received funding from big tech. At some point, society may stop believing reassurances from people with such strong conflicts of _________ and conclude, as I have, that their dismissal betrays wishful thinking rather than good counterarguments.

1.

A．Comfortingly

B．Unfortunately

C．Accidentally

D．Luckily

2.

A．express

B．feel

C．downplay

D．highlight

3.

A．threat

B．boost

C．disgrace

D．contribution

4.

A．extinction

B．health

C．resource

D．exposure

5.

A．abandoning

B．cherishing

C．frustrating

D．narrowing

6.

A．arrogant

B．irresponsible

C．ignorant

D．biased

7.

A．cognitive

B．physical

C．linguistic

D．emotional

8.

A．deliberately

B．abstractly

C．frequently

D．fundamentally

9.

A．tightening

B．exercising

C．maintaining

D．escaping

10.

A．assist

B．surpass

C．collect

D．evaluate

11.

A．obvious

B．urgent

C．questionable

D．private

12.

A．legal

B．financial

C．professional

D．ethical

13.

A．investment

B．pause

C．research

D．initiative

14.

A．take place

B．grow up

C．sink in

D．go away

15.

A．interest

B．religion

C．taste

D．law

3 . To prevent tsunami-caused disasters, several countries worked together to expand the use of a tsunami-detecting system that had been developed in the United States by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The system________ of an instrument installed on the seafloor — called a tsunameter — that measures pressure changes caused by a passing tsunami. The tsunameter sends a signal to a surface buoy (浮标), which sends the data to a satellite, which ________ the information to warning centers around the world.

By 2004 only six such detectors had been installed, all in the Pacific. There were________ in the Indian Ocean, and many countries in the region had no national warning centers that could have ________ local communities. That policy mistake had tragic consequences. In Sumatra people had only a few minutes to run, ________the tsunami took two hours to reach India, and some 16,000 people died there. “It was totally unnecessary,” says Paramesh Banerjee, a geo-physicist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “Technically it would have been relatively ________ to install a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean.”

There are now 53 detector buoys operating in the world’s oceans, including 6 of a planned 27 in the Indian Ocean. So a (n)________ of the 2004 horror, in which the tsunami traveled for hours and still caught people by ________ is less likely. But buoys would not have helped in Sumatra. People living on coasts near a rupturing fault (地壳断层) can’t wait for ________ that a tsunami is on its way, which it often isn’t; they must flee as soon as the quake hits. The Japanese warning system relies not only on tsunameters but also on seismometers (地震测量仪) — a thousand of them ________ the country, the densest network anywhere — combined with a computer model that forecasts the scale of a tsunami from the magnitude (震级) and ________ of the quake.

In March, the system, which is run by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), did not work perfectly. JMA’s initial ________, while the ground was still shaking, put the quake magnitude at 7.9 — but later analysis revealed a quake that, at magnitude 9, was 12 times larger. The tsunami forecast warned of waves of ten feet or more — but they reached 50 feet in Minanisanriku and in some places even ________. But the human ________ to the warning was imperfect as well. “I think this time many people who lived above the high-water mark of the 1960 tsunami didn’t bother to run.” says Jin Sato, mayor of Minanisanriku. “Many of them died.” The town’s seawall, he thinks, also gave people a false sense of ________

1.

A．approves

B．rids

C．expects

D．consists

2.

A．broadcasts

B．foresees

C．assigns

D．imposes

3.

A．some

B．a few

C．none

D．others

4.

A．qualified

B．alerted

C．substituted

D．fueled

5.

A．although

B．until

C．as

D．where

6.

A．difficult

B．thoughtful

C．easy

D．pressing

7.

A．alternative

B．perspective

C．repetition

D．resume

8.

A．surprise

B．mistake

C．accident

D．force

9.

A．reference

B．confirmation

C．suggestion

D．expectation

10.

A．undertake

B．multiply

C．deposit

D．blanket

11.

A．location

B．direction

C．territory

D．length

12.

A．note

B．catalogue

C．volume

D．estimate

13.

A．worse

B．larger

C．higher

D．wider

14.

A．schedule

B．scheme

C．monitor

D．response

15.

A．warning

B．security

C．setting

D．responsibility

5 . If at first you don’t succeed, as the old saying goes, try, try again. Good advice, up to a point. But let me offer a _________: even when you do succeed, try, try again. Tempting as it is to declare victory and move on, in many endeavors there is much to be said for rethinking an apparently satisfactory formula.

Consider the advice for job interviews in Talent, a new book by economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist Daniel Gross. They suggest asking a(n) _________ question, such as “give me an example of when you resolved a difficult challenge at work.” Then ask for another example. And another. The pat answers will be _________ quickly, and the candidate will have to start improvising, digging deep — or perhaps admit to being stumped.

Indeed, one way to describe this tactic is that the interviewer is asking for answers in _________ rather than for answers in series. Instead of stringing together a logical sequence of 17 questions, the interviewer is asking for 17 different answers to the same question.

While that approach is _________ in job interviews, it is common practice among designers. They often produce several _________ attempts to meet a given brief, rather than immediately focusing on what seems to be the best idea. In doing so, the designers force themselves to _________ the full range of possibilities, to avoid the risk of committing too early to a concept that seems attractive but may _________ be a dead end.

A striking example of parallel design is the creation of the Windows 95 startup sound. Microsoft was looking for an opportunity to _________ the audio capabilities of the computers of the day, so it is commissioned the famed music producer Brian Eno to do so.

Eno recalls receiving a brief, asking for music that was “inspirational, sexy, driving, provocative, nostalgic... there were about 150 __________. And then at the bottom it said, ‘and not more than 3.8 seconds long’”.

Eno describes himself as being “completely bereft of ideas” at the time. He found the brief both hilarious and inspiring. In the end he __________ more than 80 tiny pieces of music. The final result was a musical signature that has stood the test of time and was one that helped to creatively liberate Eno. “It really __________ a logjam in my own work,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle.

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, in their delightful book Designing Your Life, suggest an exercise in which you sketch out a vision for the next five years of your life. What will you be doing? Where will you live and with whom? Are you hoping to run a marathon? Start a business? Write a novel?

This is often a straightforward act of __________, but what makes the exercise excruciating is what comes next: Burnett and Evans ask you to do it again, only this time, you’re to write an entirely different projection — the idea at the heart of the plan is one that is completely forbidden: Forcing yourself to go back to the __________ board, not only a second, but a third time.

I’ve tried this myself and seen others try it. People squirm. They protest. Sometimes they cry. And then, sooner or later, the ideas start pouring out.

We all contain __________. But we don’t always let them see the light of day. Perhaps we should try producing answers in parallel more often. Even when you do succeed, try, try again.

1.

A．suggestion

B．promotion

C．recommendation

D．modification

2.

A．routine

B．academic

C．personal

D．controversial

3.

A．presented

B．exhausted

C．challenged

D．accepted

4.

A．style

B．parallel

C．detail

D．privacy

5.

A．fundamental

B．flexible

C．unconventional

D．practical

6.

A．distinct

B．determined

C．deliberate

D．vain

7.

A．dismiss

B．restrict

C．explore

D．overlook

8.

A．inevitably

B．accidentally

C．theoretically

D．eventually

9.

A．scale up

B．figure out

C．experiment on

D．show off

10.

A．adjectives

B．statements

C．variables

D．copyrights

11.

A．purchased

B．composed

C．performed

D．appreciated

12.

A．exhibited

B．created

C．broke

D．underestimated

13.

A．aggressiveness

B．imagination

C．wisdom

D．will

14.

A．dart

B．score

C．drawing

D．notice

15.

A．emotions

B．ambitions

C．desires

D．multitudes

6 . During the initial stages of instructed L2 (the second language) acquisition students learn a couple thousand, mainly high frequency words. Functional language proficiency, however, _______mastery of a considerably large number of words. It is therefore _______ at the intermediate and advanced stages of language acquisition to learn a large vocabulary in a short period of time. There is not enough time to _______the natural (largely incidental) L1 (the first language) word acquisition process. Incidental acquisition of the words is only possible up to a point, _______, on account of their low frequency, they do not _______often enough in the L2 learning material.

Acquisition of new words from authentic L2 reading texts by means of strategies such as contextual deduction (演绎) is also not a _______for a number of reasons. There appears to be no _______to intentional learning of a great many new words in a relatively short period of time. The words to be learned may be _______in isolation or in context. Presentation in bilingual (双语的) word lists seems an _______shortcut because it takes less time than contextual presentation and yields excellent short term results. Long term memory, ________, is often disappointing so contextual presentation seems advisable.

Any suggestions on how to use this in educational contexts should be based on a systematic ________ of the two most important aspects of the L2 word learning problem, this is to say,   selecting the relevant vocabulary (which and how many words) and creating the best conditions for the acquisition process. This article sets out to ________a computer assisted word acquisition programme (CAVOCA) which tries to do exactly this: the programme operationalises current theoretical thinking about word acquisition, and its ________ are based on a systematic list of the vocabulary relevant for the target group. To ________its frequency, the programme was ________ in a number of experimental settings with a paired associated method of learning new words. The experimental results suggest that an approach combining the two methods is most advisable.

1.

A．inquires

B．requires

C．receives

D．inspires

2.

A．difficult

B．easy

C．possible

D．necessary

3.

A．copy

B．focus

C．find

D．clean

4.

A．however

B．moreover

C．because

D．nevertheless

5.

A．disturb

B．seem

C．occur

D．disappear

6.

A．solution

B．approach

C．problem

D．wonder

7.

A．official

B．annual

C．objective

D．alternative

8.

A．predicted

B．presented

C．postponed

D．preferred

9.

A．available

B．outstanding

C．attractive

D．evident

10.

A．by means of

B．moreover

C．in spite of

D．however

11.

A．focus

B．analysis

C．object

D．target

12.

A．describe

B．grasp

C．link

D．force

13.

A．conclusions

B．appointments

C．aspects

D．contents

14.

A．react

B．establish

C．memorize

D．leave

15.

A．enhanced

B．invented

C．contrasted

D．behaved

7 . Founded in 1880, the journal Science nowadays continues to publish the very best in research across the sciences. It is _________ an extra round of statistical (数据的) checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are _________ the irre-producibility (不可复制) of many published research findings.

“Readers must have _________ in the conclusions published in our journal,” writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has _________ seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors (SBoRE). Manuscripts will be flagged up for additional scrutiny (审查) by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by _________ peer reviews. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to _________ these manuscripts.

Asked whether any particular papers had _________ the change, McNutt said: “The creation of the ‘statistics board’ was motivated by concerns _________ with the application statistics and data analysis in scientific research. And it is part of Science’s overall _________ to increase re-producibility in the research we publish.”

Giovanni Parmigiani, a bio-statistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he __________ the board to “play primarily a consultive role”. He agreed to join because he “found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be __________, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to __________ their approach after Science.

Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data. __________, statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Parkvilie, Australia. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in Nature in 2012, but journals should also take a(n) __________ line. Vaux says that Science’s idea to pass some papers to statisticians “has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to __________ the papers that need scrutiny in the first place.”

1.

A．announcing

B．adding

C．promoting

D．advertising

2.

A．resulting from

B．putting forward

C．calling on

D．leading to

3.

A．confidence

B．motivation

C．suspicion

D．justice

4.

A．rejected

B．appointed

C．transported

D．blamed

5.

A．considerate

B．remote

C．outside

D．indirect

6.

A．gather

B．review

C．compare

D．qualify

7.

A．stimulated

B．revolutionized

C．judged

D．resisted

8.

A．fortunately

B．negatively

C．broadly

D．automatically

9.

A．evaluation

B．drive

C．fuel

D．trick

10.

A．permitted

B．forced

C．ordered

D．expected

11.

A．thoughtless

B．amusing

C．fresh

D．profitable

12.

A．model

B．record

C．donate

D．exchange

13.

A．Furthermore

B．Instead

C．However

D．Consequently

14.

A．deeper

B．tougher

C．farther

D．thinner

15.

A．remove

B．inform

C．adjust

D．identify

8 . When it comes to black holes, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that all black holes give off thermal radiation(热辐射)and eventually evaporate(蒸发). In doing so, they seemed to be destroying information contained in the matter that fell into them, therefore going against a rule of quantum mechanics(量子力学): information cannot be created or destroyed.

Some argued that the outgoing “Hawking radiation” preserved the information. However, if this were the case, then given certain assumptions, the event horizon(视界)—— the black hole’s boundary of no return—— would become intensely energetic, forming a firewall. But such firewalls go against the theory of general relativity, which says that space-time near the event horizon should be smooth. The black hole firewall paradox was thus born.

Now, Sean Carroll at the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues have shown that the paradox disappears when the evolution of black holes is understood in the context of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The quantum state of the universe is described by something called the global wave function(全局波函数). According to traditional quantum mechanics, whenever there are many possible outcomes for physical process, this wave function ”collapses“ to represent one outcome. But in the many-worlds Interpretation, the wave function doesn’t collapse-rather, it branches, with one branch for each outcome. The branches evolve independently of each other, as separate worlds.

In this way of thinking, the formation of a black hole and its evaporation due to Hawking radiation lead to multiple branches of the wave function. An observer monitoring a black hole also splits into multiple observers, one in each branch.

The new work shows that from the perspective of an observer in a given branch, space-time behaves as described by general relativity and the black hole has no firewall.

But does that imply loss of information? No, says team member Aidan Chatwin-Davies, also of Caltech. That is because the principle of preservation of information applies to the global wave function and not to its individual branches, he says. Information is preserved across all branches of the global wave function, but not necessarily in any one branch. Given this case, a black hole that doesn’t lose information and yet has a smooth, uneventful event horizon without a fire wall isn’t a contradiction.

Yasunori Nomura at the University of California at Berkeleyy has independently arrived at some similar conclusions in his work. He agrees that the many-worlds approach resolves the paradox around information loss from black holes. “Many worlds should be taken seriously,” he says.

1. Which word in the article is similar in meaning to the underlined word in Paragraph 2?

A．Assumption (Paragraph 2)	B．Interpretation (Paragraph 4)
C．Evaporation (Paragraph 5)	D．Contradiction (Paragraph 7)

2. According to the many-worlds interpretation, which of the following statements is true?

A．There is a firewall.	B．No observer will split.
C．No information is lost.	D．The wave function collapses.

3. The last paragraph is intended to __________.

A．introduce an independent scientist

B．support the many-worlds interpretation

C．question whether many worlds really exist

D．argue against the information loss from black holes

4. What is the article mainly about?

A．Rules of quantum mechanics.

B．A new understanding of the black hole.

C．Hawking’s interpretation of the black hole.

D．The development of the global wave function.

9 . Why working from anywhere isn’t realistic

For most white-collar workers, it used to be very simple. Home was the place you left to go to work. The office was almost certainly where you were_________. Co-working spaces were for entrepreneurial people in T-shirts who wanted to hang out with other entrepreneurial people in T-shirts. You could stay at a hotel on a work trip, but it was not a place to get actual work done, which is why a hotel’s “business centre”_________all of business as using a printer.

The pandemic has thrown these neat_________up into the air. Most obviously, home is now also a place of work. According to a recent Gallup survey, three-quarters of American workers whose jobs can be performed_________expect to spend time doing just that in the future. And offices are increasingly where you go to put the company into company – through collaborative work and social activities.

_________, the boldest version of remote working extends well beyond these two locations. “Working from anywhere” imagines a completely_________existence, in which people can do their jobs in Alaska or Zanzibar. The idea sounds wonderful. Nevertheless, plenty of_________remain. Some are practical. The payroll and tax of working from different locations in a year are an administrative headache._________, working from anywhere is only feasible if your equipment functions reliably. If you spill suntan lotion on your laptop, the people on the hotel’s reception desk are more likely to offer you_________than a replacement computer.

Another set of obstacles is more__________. The carefree promise of working from anywhere is far easier to__________if you don’t have actual cares. Children of a certain age need to go to school; partners may not be able to work remotely and have careers of their own to manage.

The option to work from anywhere will be most attractive to people who have well-paid jobs and fewer__________: childless tech workers, say. For many other people, the “anywhere” in working from anywhere is a simple choice between their home and their office. That might be a recipe for__________within teams. Imagine dialing into a Zoom call covered in baby drool (口水), and hearing your colleague Greg saying how amazing Chamonix (法国城市夏蒙尼) is at this time of year.

Adding it to the menu of working options for sought-after employees__________. The working-from-anywhere policy will probably help employers attract better people. But for the foreseeable future, working from anywhere will be a bonus for a lucky few rather than a(n)__________for things to come.

1.

A．heading

B．resisting

C．worrying

D．navigating

2.

A．demanded

B．modified

C．defined

D．served

3.

A．programs

B．means

C．cases

D．categories

4.

A．solely

B．properly

C．responsibly

D．remotely

5.

A．However

B．Therefore

C．Instead

D．Besides

6.

A．isolated

B．unrestricted

C．sophisticated

D．distinguished

7.

A．principles

B．insights

C．barriers

D．arguments

8.

A．In other words

B．On the contrary

C．What’s more

D．After all

9.

A．compensation

B．enforcement

C．pressure

D．sympathy

10.

A．distinct

B．complicated

C．personal

D．unnoticeable

11.

A．realize

B．evade

C．vanish

D．make

12.

A．visions

B．descendants

C．perspectives

D．obligations

13.

A．jealousy

B．cooperation

C．fraud

D．interaction

14.

A．takes time

B．steals thunder

C．makes sense

D．works wonders

15.

A．review

B．blueprint

C．source

D．sacrifice

10 . New Journalism, American literary movement in the 1960s and 70s, pushed the boundaries of traditional journalism and nonfiction writing. The genre combined journalistic research with the techniques of fiction writing in the reporting of stories about real-life events.

As in traditional investigative reporting, writers in the genre immersed (沉浸) themselves in their subjects, at times spending months in the field gathering facts through research, interviews, and observation. Their finished works were very different, however, from the feature stories typically published in newspapers and magazines of the time. Instead of employing traditional journalistic story structures and an institutional voice, they constructed well-developed characters, sustained dialogue, vivid scenes, and strong plotlines marked with dramatic tension.     1    . Their writing style, and the time and money that their in-depth research and long stories required, did not fit the needs or budgets of most newspapers, although the editors of prominent magazines sought out those writers and published their work with great commercial success. Many of those writers went on to publish their stories in anthologies or to write what became known as “nonfiction novels,” and many of those works became best sellers.

    2    . They also associated journalism with fiction when they described their work with phrases such as “nonfiction novel” and “narrative techniques of fiction.” In so doing, they sparked off a debate over how much like a novel or short story a journalistic piece could be before it began violating journalism's commitment to truth and facts.

Some observers praised the New Journalists for writing well-crafted, complex, and convincing stories that revitalized readers' interest in journalism and the topics covered, as well as inspiring other writers to join the profession.     3    . They feared that reporters would be tempted to stray from the facts in order to write more dramatic stories, by, for example, creating composite characters (melding several real people into one fictional character), compressing dialogue (making dialogue shorter), rearranging events, or even fabricating (or inventing) details. Some New Journalists freely admitted to using those techniques, arguing that they made their stories readable and publishable without sacrificing the essential truthfulness of the tale.     4    .

A．Others firmly opposed the use of those techniques, arguing that any departure from facts, however minor, discredited a story and moved it away from journalism into the realm of fiction.

B．They also wrote in voices that were distinctly their own.

C．The New Journalists argued that objectivity does not guarantee truth and that so-called “objective” stories can be more misleading than stories told from a clearly presented personal point of view.

D．The New Journalists expanded the definition of journalism and of legitimate (正统的) journalistic reporting and writing techniques.

E．The New Journalists’ ideas continue to be explored and refined by new generations of reporters and editors.

F．Others, however, worried that the New Journalism was replacing objectivity of with a dangerous subjectivity that threatened to undermine the credibility of all journalism.